


mama's boy: a lightwood family portrait in twelve photographs

by gaykavinsky (lesbiankavinsky)



Series: mama's boy verse [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Jace Wayland is a Lightwood, Jace Wayland-centric, M/M, based on pictures from the lightwood family photo album, content warning for discussion of jace's past trauma & abuse, esp maryse, more character/relationship/etc tags to come, stories about jace & his relationship w his adoptive family, this is essentially a series of ficlets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 14:57:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16746178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/gaykavinsky
Summary: Maryse is the primary wielder of the camera, so she isn’t in many of the photos. But once Jace joins the family, she starts to be in more and more of them, partially -- and you might guess this from the photos -- because he’s even more camera shy than Alec, and will really only agree to be photographed when he has Maryse there to hold onto. In those early years, Jace is always clinging to her hand or the hem of her shirt, half hidden behind her or with his face pressed against her side, her hand resting on his blond hair.





	1. Year One

The Lightwoods are great keepers of records. There’s a whole basement room in their house filled with file cabinets that contain the kids’ legal records, medical records, school records, as well as boxes and boxes of every piece of macaroni art they ever made. Though there’s only a handful of photos displayed in the living room, tastefully arranged on the mantle and various coffee tables, the bottom shelf of the hallway bookcase is dedicated to photo albums. There are pictures of Alec, first as a baby and then, quite quickly, as a solemn little child. When he’s still very young, Izzy starts appearing in photos with him, as well as on her own, and he always seems happier and brighter next to her. But in the photographs where he’s alone, he continues to seem not only serious but also detached, his face often turned away from the camera or covered by his hands. Only rarely is he making eye contact with the camera. Then, when Alec is nine and Izzy seven, baby Max appears, crawling on the floor or in the arms of his parents or his siblings. Izzy can never quite seem to get her arms around him and often there’s a hand extending into photographs of the two of them, ready to catch him if he falls. When Alec holds him, he’s almost painfully carefully, always supporting Max’s head with one hand, face pinched in concentration. And then, three years later, the last Lightwood sibling appears. 

Maryse is the primary wielder of the camera, so she isn’t in many of the photos. But once Jace joins the family, she starts to be in more and more of them, partially -- and you might guess this from the photos -- because he’s even more camera shy than Alec, and will really only agree to be photographed when he has Maryse there to hold onto. In those early years, Jace is always clinging to her hand or the hem of her shirt, half hidden behind her or with his face pressed against her side, her hand resting on his blond hair. If there begin to be fewer photos of the other children, they’re more than made up for by the number of photos of Maryse and Jace: her reading him bedtime stories, his face turned up to her with absolute attention, the two of them walking the therapy dog that Maryse adopted shortly after they took in Jace, Jace tugging at Maryse’s hand on the beach, pulling her toward the water. There’s one photo in particular that Jace, once he’s grown up and moved out, always flips back to when he’s visiting home. It’s from the first year that he lived with the Lightwoods, back when he was a creature of unpredictable rages and bursts of crying -- the first year of his life when those uncontrollable emotions were not punished but rather met with sympathy and kindness. He’d slept very badly those first few years, and though the stuffed animals and night light that Maryse provided had helped, there were still bad nights when he woke in terror or anger or grief. This photo was taken on one of those nights. Jace isn’t sure who’s behind the camera -- Robert, probably, but he doesn’t like to think about that. In the picture, he and Maryse are asleep in the recliner, Jace’s small body tucked against his adoptive mother’s, his legs dangling off the edge of the armrest, his head resting on Maryse’s shoulder. 

Even though he was ten when he was adopted, Jace doesn’t have many memories of that first year. Most of what he knows of that times comes from these photographs and from the stories that get told around the dinner table. He’s sure his therapist -- because Maryse had put him in therapy almost as soon as he’d moved in with the Lightwoods -- would have detailed records of his behavior, his thoughts and feelings from that year, but he’s never wanted to ask. It’s not a period of his life he’s particularly interested in revisiting. The whole family -- aside from Alec, who goes even more quiet than usual around the topic of their childhood -- speaks fondly of that child that Jace has been, but he knows that he’d been something of a walking nightmare. There’s the story of the time he made a batch of cupcakes with Maryse, only to smash the platter on the floor the moment she turned her back, of the time he ripped up his brand new school uniform, of the time he threw his favorite bedtime book into the fire. Of course, there are other stories, too. Maryse is particularly fond of telling people about the misshapen clay star that he’d brought home for her one day. The class assignment, he informed her, was to make a bowl to give to their parents, but he knew that Maryse liked stars and it made no sense to him to make anything for her other than what he knew she loved. Because in spite of his tantrums and rages, he recognized Maryse almost immediately as his safe harbor in his new life -- as the first safe person he’d ever really had. Maybe that was why he destroyed so many of the things she gave him or that they made together; he had to be certain that her love for him was unconditional. The further he went in search of some line in the sand that could not be crossed, the more certain he became that no such line existed. 

The very few vivid memories he has of that year are almost all of nighttime. He remembers distinctly a handful of times that he woke up from a nightmare to find Maryse almost immediately there, as though she’d been up all night, waiting for his screams. She would come into the room and sit first at the very end of his bed and then, as his disorientation faded and she could be sure that he recognized her, she moved closer and lifted him onto her lap to rock him, talking gently into his ear. 

One of those nights, fairly early on, she waited until he was relatively calm before lifting him onto her hip and carrying him out of the room. Even at ten he was almost alarmingly small, and would remain so until around the age of thirteen, when he hit a growth spurt that not only brought him up nearly to Alec’s height but also, with the accompanying increase in appetite, brought his weight up so that his ribs were no longer visible. Maryse, who had spent years worrying over his undernourished appearance, had been deeply relieved. She hadn’t said so, not out loud, but Jace knew. That night, she carried him down to the basement, flipping on hallway lights as she went so that he wouldn’t get frightened in the dark. The largest room of the basement was a brightly decorated play space for the kids, and one corner of it was entirely devoted to stuffed animals. It’s in that corner that Maryse sets Jace down and then sits down on the plush carpet. 

“I think it might help you sleep if you had a stuffed animal friend with you, what do you think?”

Jace nodded mutely, tugging the top of his shirt up to cover half his face. 

“Do you want to pick one out?”

This time Jace shook his head, though at the time he would not have been able to put into words why he felt he could not make the choice himself. It had something to do with the fear that he would pick the wrong one, or that the very act of picking it would make it wrong.

“Do you want me to pick it out for you?”

Jace nodded again, and Maryse began to rummage through the assortment of teddy bears and dolls and various other animals. She took time over the decision, several times picking one up and inspecting it before putting it back down and continuing the search. Finally she took a large bear from the very back, near the wall, and squeezed it carefully before handing it to Jace.

“This is Miss Imogen. She’s a mama bear, which means she’s very protective, and she’ll protect you.”

Jace took Miss Imogen from Maryse and hugged her to his chest. The teddy bear was only slightly smaller than he was. He liked that, and he liked the softness of her dark fur, and he liked most of all that Maryse had chosen the stuffed animal that off all this collection would best be able to keep him safe through all the terrors of the night. 

Maryse picked him back up and carried him back up the stairs, Miss Imogen still in his arms. “I’ll stay with you, okay, pumpkin?”

Jace nodded into her shoulder, already drifting back toward sleep.

Miss Imogen became a prominent figure not only in Jace’s life, but in the life of the family. An extra chair had to be pulled up to the breakfast table so that she could eat with them, and though Maryse wouldn’t let Jace take her with him to school -- the risks both of other children teasing him and of their damaging the teddy bear in some way seemed too high -- she sat every day on a cushion on the steps so that she was the first thing in Jace’s line of sight when he came through the door. Gradually, she was joined by a small army of stuffed animals, both from the basement and ones bought specifically for Jace, who blanketed his bed and adorned various surfaces in the bedroom. He slept a little better. 


	2. Year Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The three of them sat with their lunchboxes open, Izzy and Meliorn swapping parts of their meal. Jace never liked to trade. He held his lunchbox between his knees, protective. Since moving in with the Lightwoods, he’d gotten good at watching people, at gauging how much he could trust them, how well he’d get along with them, from a distance. But he had trouble with Meliorn, even though he got to observe him at much closer quarters than other kids at school, because he was Izzy’s friend. Jace got distracted trying to figure out how he feels about the other boy, and part of that was just because he was pretty. It was nice to watch him without considering things like whether or not he was safe.

There’s a picture that Jace has kept tucked inside a book of piano music for years and years, one that never made the family photo album. It’s a polaroid that Izzy took during her photography craze the year they were in sixth grade with the camera that she got for her birthday. The picture shows Jace, unsmiling, sitting on a bench outside the school. Blood is dripping from his nose, crusting over the top of his lip. 

It was a day in November, the weather starting to turn seriously cold. He was waiting outside for his mother to come pick him up, and Izzy was skipping class to wait with him. “Solidarity,” she said, bumping shoulders with him when he stepped out of the principal’s office and asked her why she was there.

The whole thing had started at lunch. It was one of the last days warm enough that they could eat outside so pretty much everyone had bundled up and headed out to the soccer field where they’re allowed to sit during lunchtime. As usual, Jace followed Izzy to her favorite spot under the bleachers. He hadn’t yet managed to make any real friends of his own, but he and Izzy, who were only a month and a half apart in age, had clicked immediately, and so her friends are almost his friends. Almost. At any rate, they let him sit with them at lunch. Izzy’s best friend right now is Meliorn, a boy with dark, pretty hair that goes all the way down to his shoulders. Jace would have liked to touch it, but he was trying to get better about personal space so he bit his thumbnail instead. The three of them sat with their lunchboxes open, Izzy and Meliorn swapping parts of their meal. Jace never liked to trade. He held his lunchbox between his knees, protective. Since moving in with the Lightwoods, he’d gotten good at watching people, at gauging how much he could trust them, how well he’d get along with them, from a distance. But he had trouble with Meliorn, even though he got to observe him at much closer quarters than other kids at school, because he was Izzy’s friend. Jace got distracted trying to figure out how he feels about the other boy, and part of that was just because he was pretty. It was nice to watch him without considering things like whether or not he was safe. But that also made Jace nervous, so he was usually a bit on edge when they sat together. For a moment he turned away, looking out to the woods behind the soccer field where Jace thought he’d like to walk alone like he used to walk in the woods around his house before he lived with the Lightwoods, where he would climb trees and sit up as high as he could, very still, face turned up to the canopy of leaves above. When his attention snapped back, Meliorn was leaning over his lunchbox, looking in at the contents. Jace jerked back, clutching his lunchbox to his chest.

“Hey,” Meliorn said, his voice sedate. “Calm down, I was just looking.”

Cautiously, Jace lowered the lunchbox back to his knees. “I don’t trade.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later Izzy went inside to get a candy bar from the vending machine, leaving Jace and Meliorn together in awkward silence. Meliorn, probably just trying to make conversation, asked, “So why don’t you trade?”

Jace looked down at the remains of his lunch, neatly laid out in his light blue Captain America lunchbox. “I like everything in it,” he said. “My mom made it for me.”

Meliorn shrugged and that would have been that, except that Meliorn said, “Isn’t she not actually your mom though?”

The lunchbox, so carefully held for the past half hour, flew across the grass, contents tumbling out, as Jace flung himself at Meliorn. He knew that he was small and scrawny and had little in the way of muscle, but this wasn’t his first schoolyard fight and he knew how to hurt people who were bigger and stronger than him. He put his head down and used his momentum to knock Meliorn down and took the split second of his disorientation to land a punch to his jaw. Meliorn was quicker on his feet than most of the schoolyard bullies that Jace had scuffled with in elementary school, and threw him off almost immediately, hitting him hard in the nose with his elbow in the process.  _ Put the pain on a shelf _ , Jace told himself, kicking out at Meliorn as best he could. Across the soccer field, he could hear Izzy, coming closer by the second, screaming at them to stop. 

An hour later, he was waiting outside the school with Izzy, refusing to wipe the blood from his face. The nurse had cleaned him up, but the blood kept coming, and he let it. The principal had called his mother, and he didn’t want to try to hide what he had done from her. Besides, if he kept wiping at his nose and his mouth, he’d get blood on his shirt. He didn’t want that. 

The Lightwoods’ silver SUV pulled up to the curb and Jace’s mother stepped out, looking harried. She walked up to the bench and first crouched in front of Jace, taking her hands in hers. “Oh, sweetheart, you face. Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

Jace shrugged. He was afraid that if he said anything, he’d start crying.

“Isabelle, you should get back to class, you aren’t in trouble too, are you?” 

“No, I just wanted to keep him company.”

“Okay, that was sweet, but don’t skip class. Pumpkin, why don’t you wait in the car, I’ll go into talk to the principal and be back out in a minute.”

Jace got into the passenger’s side seat and pulled his knees up to his chest and waited. While he’d been with Izzy, he’d kept it together, but now, alone in the car, he burst into tears, sobs shaking his body. The crying made his nose hurt more but he couldn’t stop it. He wasn’t sure how much time passed like that, but he was still sobbing as hard as ever when the passenger’s side door opened and his mother’s arms came about him, lifting him. 

Maryse maneuvered herself into the seat, holding Jace in her lap. She let him cry himself out, petting his hair. When his breathing evened out, she asked, “What happened, sweetheart? They said you got in a fight with Isabelle’s friend.”

He tucked himself close to her chest, careful not to get any blood on her blouse. “He said you weren’t really my mom.”

“Oh, love.” Maryse took a deep breath. “You know our family is different from a lot of families, and you also know that doesn’t make us any less of a real family. But some of the other kids aren’t going to understand it. A lot of them aren’t trying to be mean, it’s just that they’ve never met someone who was adopted before. What Meliorn said hurt you, and that wasn’t okay, but he also probably didn’t mean to hurt you. Sometimes when people say things that hurt us it’s because they don’t understand, and if we explain, then they’ll understand. If they keep on saying hurtful things then it’s time to tell an adult, okay?”

Jace nodded. 

“Most important,” she went on, “I am your mother, and nothing anyone says or does can change that.”

Jace nodded again. He was starting to feel calm and safe again. 

There was a silence, and Jace had the sense that his mother was trying to make up her mind about saying something more. At last, she did. “I know that sometimes you have the instinct to hit people when they’re mean to you. That doesn’t make you a bad person. I think we all get that instinct sometimes. But it’s really important to learn how to fight that instinct, because hitting people usually only makes more conflict instead of resolving it. Does that make sense?”   


Jace nodded, a bit reluctantly.

“Do you want to talk about that?”

Jace sighed and thought about it for a moment. One of his favorite things about his mom was that she always gave him time to think something out before trying to say it out loud. “I feel better after I hit someone, or even something. I hit my pillow sometimes when I’m mad, and then I feel a bit better.”

“Hmm. Maybe there’s a sport you could do, something where you get to deal with feelings physically but without anyone getting hurt. Does that sound good?”   


Jace nodded more vigorously. 

“Okay. We’ll look into that tonight. Let’s get you home and we can clean up your nose and maybe watch some TV together.”

Jace smiled up at her and she smiled back.

“I like to see that smile.”

On the ride home, Jace watched the houses rushing past outside the window and wondered if he should try to tell her the other part of the fight. Because there had been another part of the fight; it was the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to categorize Meliorn in his head. It was the fact that Meliorn was pretty and Jace wanted to touch his hair. It was wanting to be close to him, but also being scared of wanting to be close to him. It was that sometimes he felt like fighting was the only time way he was allowed to touch other boys, and that this made Jace both sad and also eager to fight, eager to do it well. He wished he wasn’t so short and thin and weak. No, he thought, he couldn’t talk to his mom about that. Not today. He’d used up as many words as he could, explained as much as he could explain. This thought was too large and disjointed and he didn’t know if it would make any sense outside his head. He would go home and watch TV and it would be okay, it would be a problem for another day. 

When they got back to the house, Jace sat on the rim of the toilet while his mother carefully washed away the blood, made sure -- though the nurse had already checked -- that his nose wasn’t actually broken, and gave him a piece of gauze to hold against his nose until the bleeding, which had trailed off to a thin drip, went away entirely. Then they settled themselves on the couch and put on the Cartoon Network. Maryse put an arm around Jace and he rested his head against her.

After a while, he asked, “Do you think I could be a soccer player?”

“I think you could be anything.”

“Mom.” 

She turned to him. “What is it?”

“I mean, will they let me on the team? I can’t run very fast.”

“You can get faster.”

“You think so?”   


“We’ll get you a good pair of running shoes and I’ll run with you every day. Around the neighborhood.”

“Really?”

“Of course. We can get you protein bars to help you get stronger. We can do this. You and me, we’ll make it happen.”

Jace hid his smile in his mother’s face, though he was certain she knew it was there. Her arm came back around him and they kept watching cartoons for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to drive back to the school to get his siblings. He’d been dreading that part of the day because he knew that while Izzy would always be on his side, even when he punched her best friend, Alec would want to tell him why fighting was terrible and he really should try harder not to get into trouble. But he also knew that their mom would tell Alec that it wasn’t necessary and that Izzy would tease him for being such a goody two shoes and it would be okay. These days, there never seemed to be fights where Jace was outnumbered. 

**Author's Note:**

> first of all, HUGE shoutout to angie not only for proofing but for being a huge cheerleader for this project and letting me shamelessly steal her concepts. second, chapter length/update time on this will probably vary significantly bc some years in the timeline im envisioning are way more plot-heavy than others. that said, i'm hoping to write the whole thing pretty quickly so that i actually finish it!


End file.
